65 Kenyans Killed in Cattle-Rustling Violence

Published: July 14, 2005

Sixty-five people, including four children, were shot or hacked to death in violence that began with a deadly cattle-rustling raid on a remote northern Kenyan village, the police said Wednesday.

Up to 400 rustlers carrying assault rifles and machetes killed 45 people and wounded 18 early Tuesday when they struck Dida Galgalu, a village in Marsabit District, about 60 miles south of the Ethiopian border.

A police statement said that in revenge, people from the Gabra clan attacked a truck full of people from the rival Borana, which they accused of the raid, and killed 10, including four children.

Police officers killed four bandits at the village and shot dead another six as they fled across the border to Ethiopia, the police said.

''The total number of innocent people killed as a result of the banditry attack is 55; the number of bandits killed stands at 10,'' the statement said. A police spokesman, Jaspher Ombati, also said the total death toll stood at 65. No arrests were made.

Television pictures from Marsabit District Hospital showed children with bullet wounds and deep gashes.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission said it was appalled by the government's failure to prevent the killings. ''That hundreds of armed criminals can terrorize a town for hours without intervention of the country's security forces is a clear indication that the government has little authority in the northeastern region,'' the rights group said.

Politicians from northeastern Kenya have long complained that the sparsely populated region has been neglected since independence from Britain in 1963.

Members of Parliament from the area contended that the attackers were from Ethiopia and that Kenyan forces seemed afraid to pursue them across the border. ''I cannot confirm or deny that those people were Ethiopians because investigations are still going on,'' Kenya's internal security minister, John Njoroge Michuki, told Parliament.

In Ethiopia the information minister, Bereket Simon, said he knew nothing of the incident but would make inquiries.

Clashes in Kenya's arid east and north are frequent as clans fight for scant resources, and cross-border livestock raids are frequent. Local authorities and tribal elders in Ethiopia and Kenya had been holding talks on how to curb the raids, said David Kimaiyo, deputy police commissioner in Kenya.

Map of Kenya highlighting Dida Galgalu: Of the deaths in the Dida Galgalu raid, only 10 were of bandits.